Tuesday 28 October 2003

Pic of the day: "Yeah, the summer's gone, but a lot goes on forever ..." (to quote Leonard Cohen). You may be surprised by just how much goes on and on in this micro-essay:

Wrath of the Greenhouse

The chill is gone for this time, but I hear that in Eastern Europe several people have already frozen to death, caught out in the unexpected autumn cold. And all this only months after people talked about the greenhouse effect, when people died from heat shock in France.

Actually, I would be surprised if this isn’t blamed on the greenhouse effect too. I have already had people write to me after other entries on this topic, to tell me that one possible side effect of the global warming is change in the oceanic currents that transports heat to Northern Europe, the so-called Gulf Stream. (Perhaps from Norwegian "Golfstraumen", meaning the Gulf current, as it was thought to originate from the Gulf of Mexico. Today we know that most of the heat is released from the so-called Icelandic Upwelling, where warm water meets the cold surface air, exchanges heat with it and sinks chilled to the bottom of the ocean.) Indeed, I have read at least one long and very professional looking article in a scientific magazine, warning against the risk that global warming could lead to a new ice age. And it does not stop there.

Scientists have found out that global warming could cause unusually strong storms, unusually severe rainfalls AND droughts (with accompanying forest fires, no doubt). So, whether it is cold or warm, whether it rains or snows or none of the above, the reason is the same: Greenhouse warming!

This may be just me, since very few people presumably have ears in both scientific and deeply religious milieus. But this is strikingly similar to what any conservative Christian would tell you, except they don’t call it greenhouse effect or global warming. They will call it the Wrath of the Lord, or Sign of the End Times. It is presumably caused by too many people sinning too much for too long … not very different from too many people driving their cars for too long, really. Our worship of money and an ever higher standard of living is bringing all this doom upon us.

The nice thing about both these theories is that they utterly lack predictive power. If it gets warmer, then it is the greenhouse effect. Or the End Times. If it grows colder, it is also the greenhouse effect … or the End Times. Both of the theories have zero predictive power, except that they both predict that it will get worse and worse the longer we keep living the way we do. Which is not very predictive … already the ancient Egyptians were painfully aware of how much worse the times were now than in the past, and the Vikings expected the End of the World no less than the prophets of the Old Testament. We all know that the world is going to Hell in a handbasket. It has always done so and always will. And it’s always our own fault (or at least our neighbors).

***

The greenhouse effect is very real, as can easily be seen by looking at our sister planet Venus, where a couple hundred degrees of the surface temperature can be attributed to an atmosphere consisting mainly of carbon dioxide. Of course, that’s a bit more than the 0.04% we are scared of back here on our blue marble. Still, the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is enough that we should start to see measurable changes in sea levels by 2050, although it will likely take another 150 years before the sea rises to its maximum level.

The problem from a PR point of view is that people don’t care what happens in 50 years. Reasonably so, since most adults today will be dead by then, and the rest will be quite old. Also reasonably because 50 years ago scientists were worried that the dust from our industry would cause a new ice age; and 100 years ago, traffic forecasts showed that the big cities would be buried in a thick layer of horse manure…

It is very likely that by 2050, unless we manage to destroy the planet in some other way first, sea levels will have risen noticeably. Whether this at the time will be considered a bad thing or a good thing, we do not know yet. But since it is the future, it is likely to be bad, unless we repent now and start to live like our ancestors. That’s the way it has always been.

(And for the record, I consider repentance a good thing; I do it myself sometimes. But I imagine that if you repent because of global warming, God may look at you rather strangely... It's supposed to be a bit more personal, I think!)